The godfather of nonlinear games makes a splash on the Game Boy Advance.
Liberty City might be a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to
live there. That's the mantra of Mike, a mob flunky trying to get out of Liberty
City and leave his skull-cracking past behind him. However, greed keeps Mike and
his pal, Vinnie, working for the underworld.
Vinnie, however, isn't long for Liberty City, or the rest of the world for that
matter. Mike gets framed for his murder and sets to find out who framed him and
murdered Vinnie. You'll need to complete your dirty deeds, avoid the fuzz and
discover who killed Vinnie if you want to find a way out of Liberty City and the
life of crime.
In classic GTA style, Mike muscles his way through the mean streets of Liberty
City by carjacking sweet rides, avoiding the cops and running over pedestrians
who get in his way. Too many bad deeds will up his most-wanted rating and make
him a man on the lam.
Grand Theft Auto Advance crams a lot of information onto the Game Boy Advance's
screen. Along with the overhead view of the game, a radar and map of where
you're headed occupies the top left corner. Mike's stats display in the top
right, including ammunition remaining, health, money and most-wanted stars. The
bottom right corner tells you what part of the city you're in.
Despite all this information sharing the screen, Grand Theft Auto Advance isn't
a difficult game to learn to play. Mastering the controls is easy, but that's
not to say the game is easy or quick to finish. Grand Theft Auto Advance
features more than 300 missions, including vigilante and fire-and-rescue
missions.